I think it's partly a reference to the fact that for the last decade or so Microsoft had attempted to banish native-compiled languages and get everyone on the managed .NET CLR train. They took it to a point of absurdity by trying to implement much of Vista in .NET, and when that failed the product was delayed greatly.

Their new refrain is that now native code is good again, with new standards and new libraries. They created this conference only a couple of years ago, and they gave it a name that helped signal their shift in philosophy.